Given the importance of student engagement for students’ current and future success, it is essential to explore how teachers can foster student engagement within lessons. This study relied on classroom observations to describe how teachers applied Self-Determination Theory (SDT) related (de)motivating teaching behaviours to foster students’ engagement. Results from 120 observed lessons of 43 teachers indicated there were distinct relations between motivating teaching behaviours and student engagement. Most striking regarding the use of motivating teaching behaviours were the higher levels of relatedness support and guidance during activities in lessons in which students showed the highest levels of engagement. Conversely, in lessons where students were least engaged, teachers showed higher levels of chaotic teaching behaviours. Analyses of behaviours within lowly and highly engaging lessons showed that teachers in highly engaging lessons were observed to start with high levels of enthusiasm and after about ten to fifteen minutes focused on activating their students by offering room for experimenting and support while students worked on assignments. In contrast, teachers in lowly engaging lessons seemed to have a tendency to employ demotivating teaching behaviour at the start of the lesson. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Background: According to Self-Determination Theory, teachers and sport coaches can differ in the motivating style they rely upon to motivate young people. When endorsing an autonomy-supportive motivating style, instructors try to identify, vitalize, and nurture youngsters’ inner motivational resources. In contrast, instructors with a dominant controlling motivating style rather pressure youngsters to think, feel, or behave in prescribed ways. While the dimensions of autonomy support and control can be conceptually differentiated, in reality both dimensions may co-occur to different degrees. Purpose: The present study investigates to what extent perceived autonomy support and control can be combined and which motivating style then yields the most optimal pattern of outcomes. Research design: Multi-Study with Cross-Sectional Design. Findings: In two studies, conducted among elite athletes (N = 202; M_age = 15.63; SD = 1.70) and students in physical education (N = 647; M_age = 13.27; SD = 0.68) reporting on their instructor’s motivating style, cluster analyses systematically pointed towards the extraction of four motivating profiles. Two of these groups were characterized by the dominant presence of either autonomy support (i.e. high-autonomy support) or control (i.e. high control), while the two dimensions were found to be equally present in the two remaining groups (i.e. high–high or low–low). Results revealed that the high-autonomy support group showed to the most optimal pattern of outcomes (e.g. need satisfaction, autonomous motivation), while the high-control group yielded the least optimal pattern of outcomes. Results further showed that perceiving one’s instructor as high on control is detrimental (e.g. higher need frustration, amotivation) even when the instructor is additionally perceived to be autonomy-supportive. Finally, it appeared better to be relatively uninvolved than to be perceived as exclusively high on control. Conclusions: When coaches or teachers are perceived to be high on autonomy support and low on control, this is likely to benefit youngsters’ motivation and well-being. Also, while some instructors, particularly those who are functioning in a more competitive context where pressure is considered more normative, may endorse the belief that the combination of autonomy support and control yields the most effective cocktail to motivate young people (e.g. using competitive and game-based activities to make it fun, while treating ‘the losers’ with punishments such as push-ups or humiliating comments), this perspective is not supported by the findings of the current study. Apart, from its theoretical relevance, the findings of the present study are valuable for future intervention development.

Low levels of physical activity are characteristic in preschoolers. To effectively promote physical activity, it is necessary to understand factors that influence young children's physical activity. The present study aimed to investigate how physical activity levels are influenced by environmental factors during recess in preschool.